


Started From the Bottom

by dreaminginside



Series: Mafia AU [1]
Category: Topp Dogg (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Badass, Blood, Guns, Hella, I don't know what I'm tagging, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 14:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1230064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreaminginside/pseuds/dreaminginside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sehyuk turns fifteen, he starts taking his coffee black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Started From the Bottom

**Author's Note:**

> a series of drabbles, mostly chronological, from charlie pro and i's much discussed mafia au you guys are amazing!!

**I**

When Sehyuk turns fifteen, he starts taking his coffee black.

Taeyang barks out a laugh when he discovers this at two in the morning in the same grungy diner they always go to after jobs, kicking back twice as hard when Sehyuk’s boot finds his knee under the table.

“Just like your heart,” Taeyang grins around his own cup, and Sehyuk’s eyebrows furrow when he sees the bloodstain on Taeyang’s cuff, idly wondering when exactly they became like this.

The coffee burns going down, and he keeps drinking, hoping that Taeyang is right and that it will coat his insides to be bitter and black and unforgiving.

He doesn’t think about the weight of the gun in his back pocket anymore.

 

**II**

Taeyang is relatively sure he had dreams at one point in time that didn’t involve the crack of skin and bone under his knuckles.

He winces and shakes out his fists in the aftermath, and begins to think he needs a new kind of gimmick because these brawls are really beginning to take a toll on his hands. He spits out a mouthful of blood and catches his reflection on the outside of the building as he walks, and thinks his face could be a bit worse for wear as well.

But there’s a fat wad of bills in his pocket testifying to a finished job, and that he can’t complain about.

He throws the money on the table when he enters his and Sehyuk’s glorified closet of an apartment, surprised to see Sehyuk actually there and a small armory laid out on the floor before him.

“Are we going to be weapons dealers now?” Taeyang is only half kidding, because there is certainly merit in that as well and maybe then he wouldn’t be constantly nearly breaking his hands for a few useless hits. Sehyuk considers him before striding over, grabbing hold of Taeyang’s chin and grinning, and Taeyang decides he likes the look in his eyes.

Sehyuk tastes like the coffee he’s constantly drinking and the blood still leaking from Taeyang’s lips, but it’s electric and Taeyang knows that something is about to change.

“Let’s branch out on our own.”

**III**

“Not a chance.”

If there is one thing that Taeyang hates more than Dongsung himself, it’s trying to negotiate with Dongsung.

“I’m not going to beg you, asshole,” Taeyang grumbles, and he wonders if Sehyuk would be mad if he killed the only person possibly as insane as them to help out with this. Dongsung is big and dumb and good with a gun, and even though Taeyang might hate him, he can’t deny that he has value. “You know it’s a good deal, we’d be able to take over this turf in no time.”

“Not with your brains we wouldn’t,” Dongsung kicks his feet on the table and gives Taeyang a once over, decidedly looking down on him even when they aren’t standing. Taeyang is suddenly reminded about why they don’t associate much, and has to push down the urge to reach for the brass knuckles in his pocket. “Why would you even call me, Taeyang? Your ideas never work, if the other gangs didn’t get us then the feds would --”

“It’s not mine, it’s Sehyuk’s.” 

“Oh.”

Taeyang might be small and dumb, but he is good with a gun, and even if Dongsung hates him, if this whole idea is Sehyuk’s, then Dongsung knows there will be a good payday at the end.

“Oh is right.”

 

**IV**

Sanggyun will admit it, he may have a bit of a problem when it comes to explosives.

He will also admit that it may be a bit sketchy that he goes to college for the sole purpose of legal explosions, and it could be true that he has had one or two problems with keeping more chemicals than he probably should within his apartment.

But he really does not mean to blow off half of his neighbor’s bathroom in the process of attempting to Build a Better Bomb for one of his theory classes. He was just attempting to put theory into practice, and he really doesn’t think he should be in holding for that. The officers look weary as he tries to tell them this, and he ends up shoved in a cell with a rather bleak outlook until they can figure out what to do with him.

He wonders what it means when you’re considered a regular at the local police office.

Suwoong refuses to come and pay his bail (again), so he sets up next to two guys who are arguing so viciously he’s a bit concerned that there will be a brawl, unconsciously reaching in his pocket for a lighter that isn’t there as he waits.

Two hours of incessant arguing and a near fist fight later the doors come open for the pair next to him, and to his surprise he’s yanked up as well.

He doesn’t get any answers beyond his bail having been posted, and he wonders if Suwoong decided to come through for him when he spots a card with a number and a message slipped in with the rest of his belongings.

_Heard you were good with explosives. Call if interested. Park Sehyuk._

 

**V**

Hojoon is something of an accidental drug lord.

One too many marathons of Breaking Bad and ever looming payments of his student loans later, he decides that he’s smart enough to figure out this whole drugs business. In retrospect he will admit that it was a bit of a poor life decision in terms of his new life expectancy, but there is always something to be said about a little excitement in your life.

In order to avoid this certain young death that is waiting for him he takes to attempting to hide under the wings of many of the local gangs, bargaining with profit and his skills to guarantee himself at least some muscle behind his business. It is at this point of Hojoon’s budding young career that he finds being too good at what he does is a bit of a problem, too many members becoming clients that are soon out for his head to get a hit.

He takes up bartending as some kind of stress relief part time job for the near constant threat of murder, arrest, or arrest and then murder. He wonders if he was always this cynical, and decides that the answer is definitely.

One day, he sells a drink to a man in a nice suit and a gun in his back pocket, one who screams gang leader and who looks sharp enough to bargain with. He raises an eyebrow with two notches shaved into it when Hojoon talks, and Hojoon thinks he may have finally found a winner. 

“How would you like to make a deal?”

 

**VI**

When Hyosang can’t quite choose between the bat and the gun, he plays it safe and brings both.

He is there from the ever clichéd bottom, from the moment Sehyuk decides that they are going to have their own chunk of turf, and has the scars of being the only enforcer to prove it. A life on the streets gives you smarts, but he learns fast that connections are everything, the most important being his bat connecting with whichever poor bastard happens to owe Topp Dogg money’s face.

This particular day, he gets the pleasures of kicking down the door to whatever den of cashed out addicts has incurred his services. The general motto he has developed is destroy first, ask questions later, the faster the job is done the better.

His phone buzzes persistently in his pocket just as he gets a boot through the door and the screaming begins, and he knows it can only either be Sehyuk telling him to _try_ not to make things too messy for cleanup, or Seokjin. Either call usually ends in bad news, and in the toss up of gun and bat, he goes for his _time is of the essence_ glock.

“Hello boys, is this going to be the easy way, or the hard way?”

 

**VII**

“Taeyang you fucked up again.”

“Go suck a cock, Dongsung.”

Hyunho regrets joining the team near immediately.

Through a somewhat unfortunate chain of friends, acquaintances, and references he comes into acquaintance with Park Sehyuk, who evidently has need of a man with a gun, and as he puts it, _someone who can actually hit something that isn’t directly in front of them_. Hyunho likes Sehyuk, and can appreciate the payout he offers and his refreshing sanity in a business where he has more often than not shot his bosses.

He does not like Dongsung and Taeyang.

He does not quite understand how two men who can be so obviously similar to each other can hate with the same viciousness of high school girls, but he simply tunes them out as he sets about polishing his scope from his seat in the back. This routine continues quite nicely with a background full of expletives until Dongsung says something to the effect of _motherfucking shit stain who can’t even pay anyone to fuck your ugly asshole_. Hyunho nearly bites through his tongue as Taeyang attempts to wrench the wheel out of Dongsung’s hands, sending them into the curb with a screeching halt.

Hyunho’s scope is nearly jammed down his throat from his position as some kind of unfortunately stretched pretzel against the door, and Taeyang roars in laughter even as Dongsung smiles nervously and attempts at reaching out a hand to right Hyunho.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Don’t touch me.”

 

**VII**

Sangdo considers his main strength to be that he is good under pressure. He has a sense of rationale and morality that not many of them have left, and prides himself on his abilities to negotiate and keep the unnecessary violence to a relative minimum.

He hears Sehyuk click off his safety behind him, and decides that this is not one of those times.

“Is it just since I joined, or have negotiations always been this rocky?” Sangdo mumbles as Sehyuk leans against Sangdo’s back like it is his own personal wall and loosens his tie. Sehyuk chuckles lightly and looks over his shoulder to smile at Sangdo, and for a moment Sangdo forgets this man would shoot all six of the men around them dead without a second thought.

“You may just be the good luck charm,” Sehyuk shrugs, and Sangdo thinks he can see him mentally ticking off how long this is going to take. Sangdo is beginning to think that he may have been slightly under informed for what he was signing up for. “You might want to put on your gloves at least.”

Sangdo sighs and tightens the straps on his gloves and hopes he doesn’t end up having to clean the blood out of this shirt later. Sehyuk pushes off his back and addresses their crowd in the meanwhile, index finger tapping against the scratches on the stock of his gun.

“Being that you boys don’t seem to know who you’re dealing with, I’ll let you off with a warning if you be kind enough to move out of the way,” Sehyuk is still smiling, and Sangdo winces as one snaps back and reaches for the gun in his back pocket as answer. 

He is on the ground before his finger reaches the trigger, and Sangdo can almost see another notch being added.

Sangdo sighs, his shirt is going to need to go to the dry cleaners.

 

**IX**

Sangwon enjoys watching the embers fall from the end of his lit cigarette.

The smoke smells acrid and different than the usual smoke that rises from his experiments on Sanggyun’s explosives, and there is something relaxing about how the transparency paints the air. He’s about to bring it to his lips when a hand cuffs his ear.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing _now_?” Sanggyun grumbles, doing a quick once over of everything in his makeshift lab and breathing a sigh of relief when nothing seems to be touched by Sangwon’s destructive hands. “That kind of thing will kill you.”

“We’re basically in the mafia, and you’re worried about cigarettes?” Sangwon’s laughter is short and barking, and Sanggyun’s mouth screws itself into a grimace as he stares at the burn mark on the floor. Sangwon hops down from his perch on a wayward box and over to his side of the lab, pulling out another stick from the carton. “You may really want to rethink your priorities.”

“Says the one who begged me to convince Sehyuk to let you in,” Sanggyun snorts, and Sangwon lets a smile tug at his lips. There’s something that is always refreshing about their banter, though not quite as fun as Sanggyun’s face when he beats him to the making of their bombs. “Aren’t those Taeyang’s, anyway? He’s going to kill you if you stole some of his stash.”

“He’s quitting,” Sangwon says casually, and Sanggyun’s eyes widen in the same way that Sangwon’s did when Taeyang pushed the packages into his hands. Kim Taeyang who has made stress smoking a near olympic sport for as long as Sangwon has been around, likely even longer. “For the new little lamb.”

“The same Kim Taeyang who just this morning shot a hole through my wall for being too loud?”

“The same.”

“Doing something for someone else? For that poor sweet boy who doesn’t know what he is getting in to?”

“The world works in mysterious ways, Sanggyun.”

Sanggyun lobs a chemistry book at his head.

 

**X**

Jiho likes to think that he is rather easy to get along with, and prides himself on being just about as friendly as one can be while still bashing one’s head in with a baseball bat. Due to this, he considers himself on rather good terms with most people he meets.

With the exceptions of those who meet his bat, and Jin Hyosang. He would like to think they have some kind of working relationship fondness at this point, but Hyosang likes reminding him that this is very much not the case, usually with the butt of his pistol.

“Stop napping,” Hyosang snaps as he kicks at Jiho’s head, dislodging the newspaper that had been shielding his eyes from the garage lights. He’s been up all night in an attempt to fix Hyosang’s barely functioning car, and the last thing he really wants is the ever familiar feel of Hyosang’s boot against his face. “This isn’t daycare, there’s work to do. Did you finish fixing my baby again?”

Jiho snorts, and wonders why they can’t just all get along.

It could be due to him crashing Hyosang’s car in a drift race shortly after their first meeting, but he swears it runs good as new. He even put a new set of rims on, and he lets himself pout slightly as Hyosang gives him a withering glare.

“Some more druggies haven’t been paying Hojoon their dues,” Hyosang shrugs, running a finger over the hood that Jiho had been working on previously, and Jiho groans when he notes the extra gun in the back of Hyosang’s pants, likely meant for him. He hates dealing with the addicts most. “You know what that means.”

“Time to rock and roll?”

“Don’t crash my car this time.”

 

**XI XII**

Hansol paints his face so that he looks like a completely different person.

Byungjoo’s nose crinkles as Hansol puckers his lips at him, now painted a dark red. He thinks that Hansol takes some special joy in finding the most outrageous colors and slathering his face in them for these kinds of jobs.

“You’re having too much fun,” Byungjoo huffs as he straightens his tie, flattening down his freshly dyed hair. His suit is simple in comparison to Hansol’s black dress, the two of them making a rather inconspicuous couple. There is something much more fun about the little subtleties of their job than the usual cut and dry business that the rest of them dabble in. “Why do I always have to be the boring gun guy, while you get to go bat your eyelashes and get fawned on?”

“I’m prettier,” Hansol shrugs, putting the finishing touches on his eyeshadow and brushing nonexistent lint off the shoulder of his dress. Byungjoo’s face twists as Hansol pulls up the hem to check the knives secured in his garter, and Byungjoo fakes a gag as Hansol blinks up at him under his lashes. “I’ll get them drunk, you get the information. It will be a beautiful show, as per always.”

“Sehyuk should pay me double for working with you,” Byungjoo grumbles, but there is a grin on his face as he proffers his arm, Hansol’s nails digging into his elbow as he accepts it.

“Then I deserve triple.”

 

**XIII**

Yoonchul nearly sweats through his suit preparing to walk into the meeting room for the first time.

The tie at his neck is knotted too tight and the sleeves of his blazer are still slightly too short on his arms, something he is hyperconscious of as his hand pauses on the doorknob. He can hear the loud arguing through the wood, and reassures himself that at least he must not be late then. He bites his lip as he twists, and wonders if he really knows what he is doing when he clicked that ad on the hacker board and ended up joining one of the most notorious gangs around.

“Well, are you going in or not?”

There’s a gruff voice behind him and Yoonchul nearly jumps out of his skin, hand flying away from the handle like it’s on fire. The man who owns the voice snorts, and it’s then that Yoonchul realizes how much he has to look down to be level with him, allowing himself to be pushed out of the way, slinking into the room shortly after and noting the last two seats available.

“You’re new here, aren’t you, princess?” The man from the hall pushes his sunglasses up as he talks, and the way he gives Yoonchul a once over makes him feel fairly violated for reasons he doesn’t really comprehend. He shuffles to the opposite side of the table in the meanwhile, painfully aware of the eyes on him. “Don’t be scared, we don’t bite.”

“Stop harassing the new guy, Taeyang.”

“Up yours.”

Sehyuk, a familiar face in a sea of terror, smiles at him as he takes his seat, and it’s all Yoonchul can do to give a shaky grin back. There are guns and knives littering the meeting table, and Yoonchul doesn’t know if he even has a lighter in his pocket.

He doesn’t know if he belongs here.

“Well, gentlemen, let’s get started.”

**Author's Note:**

> All of anything is appreciated, thank you for reading!


End file.
